


Blakes 7 Drabbles and Tiny Vignettes

by Sally M (sallymn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Assorted short pieces, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallymn/pseuds/Sally%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spot to collect drabbles (100-words) and tiny plotless pieces, mostly written for challenges, for Blakes 7</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alone

**Alone**

****

So terribly alone, but at night I sense them...

A faint smell of fresh earth, that is Gan; 

Jenna, like just-glimpsed lightning; 

A touch like soap bubbles - Vila; 

Avon, tasting of cold, clear air; 

and Blake, the sound of a heartbeat. 

  


In the night, I am not so alone. 

**\- the end -**

  



	2. Ballad

**Ballad**

****

The Ballad of Bold Roj Blake, the poets called it. After all these years, he could still recite it by heart. If he wanted to.

He didn't of course. Better to let ghosts be called heroes while he stayed safe, in the backstreets of Gauda Prime. Better to let others tell the story. 

And the poets, they had remembered him, which was nice. A whole five verses on a brave little thief, as many as there were for the pilot, the genius and the noble alien ally. 

But it hurt - just a little - that they'd all forgotten Gan... 

**\- the end -**

  



	3. Celebration

**Celebration**

****

"Orac said," Avon murmured to his Fearless Leader, knowing that the native gigantabagpipes and warhorns would drown him out, "it's a display of friendship, and that we should be flattered."

"I am," his Leader hissed, turning his best warm, admiring gaze to the locals who were putting on this very ancient celebration for them. 

"Performed for the most cherished friends," Avon continued. "They have, it seems, no enemies on this world." 

"And the - heads on spears?" 

"I imagine," Avon stared blandly at the beautifully coiffed and painted - and very dead - non-friends, "anyone who was not sufficiently flattered..." 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (from the prompts _Blake and Avon_ , and _dancing_...)


	4. Listen Very Carefully

**Listen Very Carefully**

****

He stares across the flight deck, icily menacing.

"Listen very carefully, Blake." His voice is harsh. "I shall say this only once. If you go this path, it will lead to death. And I will not follow that path with you. I will not." 

He pauses. "And I will never, ever forgive you for dying and leaving us all... not quite alive." 

His shoulders slump. No, the words are not yet right, he will keep saying them in an empty flight deck until they are. 

And _then_ , he will say it - only once - when Blake will hear them. 

  



	5. Funny?

**Funny?**

****

"Well, of course I'm laughing at you," he says, aggravatingly cheerful.

"Avon, it isn't funny!" 

"No?" He stops to consider. "Actually, yes it is, and you did annoy our new allies." 

"That was Vila!" 

"But Vila hasn't been morphed into a toothless blue squidapoid with purple curls." 

"Look on the bright side, Tarrant," Dayna says brightly while I'm thinking of an answer. "At least you still have arms - well, tentacles - so you can still fly Scorpio with practice. And fire a gun." 

"At Vila," Avon smiles, sharklike as always. "If you ever catch up with him, of course." 

  



	6. Yes It is Quiet

**Yes, It is Quiet**

The Liberator sailed on. Zen monitored the silence, outside and in. 

Outside, in deepest space, stars burned coldly and without sound; nebula flickered on the edge of sensors, and were gone. 

Inside, all was quiet, serene, peaceful. No fighting on Zen's flight deck, no bad jokes from Vila, no Auronar platitides from Cally or sneers from Kerr Avon. No yelling, complaining or demanding. Not even the drumming of manicured nails by Jenna. Nothing at all. 

Zen monitored the silence. And noted in its databanks that the laryngitis bacteria were a most useful Earth organism to keep in stock for emergencies... 

**\- the end -**


	7. Rules

**Rules**

"All right, all right," Avon snarled at three sets of pleading eyes - Cally's green, Dayna's brown, and the new crewmember's fourteen purple. "He - it can join the crew." 

He turned to face it. "But you learn the rules first. My rules. One. This is my ship. Two. You do as you're ordered." 

"Like the rest of us do." Vila added softly. 

"Three." Avon looked down at the scraps of wool and leather, light brown curls and one large, bright, white tooth at their feet. "If you stay on this ship, you will remember, Brian. 

"Eating People is Wrong." 

**\- the end -**


	8. Calculated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post Gauda Prime, with all that entails for Our Heroes...

**Calculated**

"A calculated risk, Orac." 

*Poorly calculated.* 

"You think so? I predicted that Avon would come here." 

*Correct.* 

"And that, given the trauma each has suffered, he and Blake would destroy themselves. That thorn in the Federation's side is gone, and I can finally claim that fee I was owed -" 

*By Servalan.* 

"Now Sleer, thank you. Oh, and you played the computerised double-agent very well." 

*Of course. That was the agreement, Psychostrategist. And once she comes to pay you, and collect me -* 

"As she will, I have calculated, within ten days -" 

*We kill her.* 

"Just another thorn... gone." 

**\- the end -**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (from the prompts _Orac_ and _Carnell_ , and _calculations_...)


	9. It Fell

**It Fell**

It was, he knew, a wonderful machine, the like of which he'd never even imagined, let alone thought to use. 

He stared at the clear plasteel box, found just where the Scorpio crew had said it would be, hidden in bushes by the edge of a cliff. 

He thought over what the rebellion could do with it, what the Scorpio crew had said about its power and usefulness. And what Blake had said about its almost human nature, its ego, its fickleness, its threat. 

The decision was not hard. 

It made a most satisfying crunch when it landed far below. 

**\- the end -**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (from the prompts _Orac_ and _Deva_ , and _distance_...)


	10. There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (from the prompts _Avon_ and _Cally_ , and _mind_...)

**There**

I didn't know. I truly didn't know. I would never have gone there had I known. I only thought to help... to know him better. 

But it is so cold, so icy and hard and desperately lonely there. 

He cares for few people, and nearly all of them are gone. 

Anna. 

His brother. 

Blake. 

He doesn't even know how much he misses them. He would never believe it if I told him that I... touched his mind, the way I can and do touch, know them all. 

I can never tell him what I know. 

He would never forgive me. 

**\- the end -**


	11. Avon, Soolin and A Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A vignette done years ago for a challenge "Avon/Soolin and their child or children. (evil smile)"

**Avon, Soolin and A Baby**

****

There was quiet at last... but for a weary, sleepy, sniffling noise from the seat behind her, blessed, beautiful quiet.

Soolin drew a deep, shaky breath and drew on every scrap of steel-edged self-control she possessed, the self-control that had been tested over and over again and never dented... 

Until now. 

"How is -?" she whispered finally, proud of the almost-authentic flippant calm she managed to fake. 

"Asleep." Avon's voice was low; the flat, snarling undertone, so much a part of him since she had first met him, was missing. he almost sounded... _frazzled,_ as Vila would have said. "And I believe our best plan is to ensure he remains so until we reach safety." 

"Agreed," she said fervently. "This is a mistake, Avon, you know that." 

"Of course I know it," he hissed. "But it's done, and if you wish to separate..." 

"Not yet." In spite of herself, a mocking note entered her voice, still cautiously low. "Ask me again if this goes on for three or four days." 

She could almost _feel_ him shudder, and that made her feel - marginally - less shaky herself. 

She ventured a quick look back at him, sitting stiff and awkwardly afraid to move in the back seat of the hovercar, one hand clenched at his side, so tightly that even from one glance she could see white knuckles, the other moving jerkily... tentatively. His bleak face was a study in barely hidden uncertainty, his eyes a mask for... well, had she been mad enough to say it, _frightened_. Even more so than she was. 

As he should be, this was his doing, all of it. The disaster, the flight, the... additional baggage by his side. 

What in the name of every god in the galaxy were they doing, taking this on? So he felt guilty for killing the man on Gauda Prime - _the wrong man, the wrong hero, the wrong Blake,_ the words chimed in her head - but was that any reason for her to get involved in his madness? _It wasn't your Blake. It was a clone. It was Servalan's rogue clone._

 _Orac found out... just too late._

Which brought her thoughts - and gaze - to the little monster who had made their lives hell for the last two days. The little monster they'd run across as they escaped the chaotic battle in the Gauda Prime base, the terrifying, terrified little monster of a child Avon - Avon! - wouldn't leave behind but who fought them every inch of the way. Who'd nearly got them captured, who'd kicked the stolen flyer's controls and nearly crashed them, who'd screamed for five solid hours for someone called "DAAADAAAA!!!" Who'd refused to eat, and then thrown up all over them both. Who kept staring at them with huge, brown-gold eyes filled with a fear that made Soolin, as hardened and callous as she'd had to learn to be, feel sick, but who'd started screaming _again_ when she or Avon tried to clean, feed, or even touch him. Whose finally exhausted, whimpering, fragile crying had almost cracked Avon's own dented but still herculaneum-strong self-control. 

Blake's... clone's... son. 

Who neither of them had the faintest idea what to do with, or how to care for. 

Who was now a dirty, dishevelled little ball of utter misery curled up beside his kidnapper's side, breath still hitching after another bout of crying - though this time, when Avon had tried, ineptly and uncomfortably, to pick him up, had suddenly latched on to the appalled man like a Helotrician limpet and wept noisily and wetly into his neck. The child's tiny hands were now clenched tightly in the black material of Avon's shirt, his face was buried in Avon's lap, his dark, unruly brown curls were hiding his face... and Avon was - _oh heavens!_ \- petting him lightly, warily, ludicrously like Vila would have looked stroking a miniature warg with toothache. 

_Don't stop,_ she thought helplessly, too afraid of waking the monster to speak it aloud. _As long as it keeps him blessedly, beautifully quiet, don't stop._

_We can barely save ourselves, Avon, you and me. He's not even your Blake's child, and your Blake is nothing to me anyway. And nothing to you, so you kept saying. What were you thinking, Avon?_

_What the hell are we going to do with him???_

**\- the end -**


	12. Tender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a vignette done to the prompt "Cally becomes a cannibal, and Vila looks tender to her..."

  


**Tender**

****

"Thin...... too thin. All too thinnn. You mmmust eat more...."

Cally had definitely changed somewhat since that business with the alien podship and the blue eggy thing they'd blown up, and Vila wasn't completely sure he liked it. For one thing she seemed a bit paler and - if it was possible - thinner, and not even Zen knew enough about Auron physiognomy to tell them not to worry. 

Oh, _Cally_ told them not to worry - in that soft, slightly hissing way she'd started talking, so slight Vila wasn't even sure the others noticed - but Vila wasn't absolutely sure _that_ wasn't something else to worry about as well. 

He did like the fact that she seemed - at long last - to notice how sweet and charming and friendly and just damn well nicer to have around he was than Avon and Tarrant (not that _that_ was hard... but Dayna and Jenna had always been somewhat blinkered on that point too) and that she spent far more time with him. 

And her new interest in food - _good_ food, not those dire healthy concentrates and processed plankton she had been forcing down their throats since Saurian Major, but _decent_ Delta and Gamma food - roast meats, deep-fried skysquid, houndburgers and fried and battered starches, and sweet choklit of every description... and decent cake, all sugar and faux-fruit and pseudcream. She and Zen's food processors made a virtual banquet of good, solid, body-building junquefood every meal, and even Tarrant was beginning to show the effects, especially from the rear... 

"Still tooo thin.... nneeed more flllesh, meat on bonesss." 

Vila didn't care - after all, who needed to be fit with Zen to do the running from the Federation for them, while Avon searched the galaxy for Blake, Tarrant and Dayna bickered and played, and Cally fed them up and petted them... well, petted him. He patted his nicely rounded stomach, and settled down for a nice, lazy afternoon with his favourite soma and adrenalin mixture, the one Cally had persuaded him to sweeten more. 

"Nice and tennnder... sweeter than the rrrrest...." 

Odd thing about Cally's room, though... all that time so bare and spartan, now she was doing it up in thousands of strands of glittery silk, from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall. Dayna thought it creepy, the way it trailed on the skin like Kairopan silk; Avon had taken one look, given that short, snarling laugh Vila hated, and likened it to a cocoon... but what the hell, even an Auron could change her tastes. If she liked what she'd seen on the alien podship... who were they to argue? 

Oh yes, she'd changed... and Vila wasn't completely sure he liked it, but he thought he did. She seemed happy, and the changes hadn't hurt anyone. He took a swig of the very very sweet, sugary soma and adrenalin and decided he'd worry later, if he had too... 

**\- the end -**

  



	13. True Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small and rather strange vignette, written for a challenge and based on a quote shown at then end...

**True Men**

****

"Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men."

The speaker, who apparently went by the name of Benstead, nodded sagely. 

Avon merely lifted an eyebrow and gazed at Deva, who gazed mildly back... then turned and stared at the speaker. 

"Really." He spoke in a flat, dead voice. He wasn't really interested in arguing with their rescuers, it was enough to be escaping from the nightmare that was Gauda Prime, get away and find safety somewhere. Anywhere. 

Regroup. 

Revive. 

Survive. 

Or something similar... survival, however, was overrated. He knew that now. 

And these rescuers were not Hommiks, not just people with minds more primitive than their weapons. These were Blake's allies, so he needed to be careful with them. 

"Arrrh, but we knows these things, 'puter-rubber," Benstead went on in that thick, gravely voice, piloting the battered and confusing controls with graceless ease. "True men, they have other business, important business." 

"Blake -" 

"Arrrh Blake, he knows the business of true men, yes." It was hard to say if the tone that crept in was disparaging or admiring - but then it was hard for him to tell anything at all. "But not always does he follow it." 

"Bl- he seldom followed any path for long," Avon said wearily, trying not to think about the nine-parts-dead man in the medical capsule Benstead was perched on. There really _wasn't_ the room they needed in this tiny, very strange, very very fast ship... 

Revive, he reminded himself grimly. 

Survive. 

_You had better survive, B-Blake,_ he thought. _Though they would probably have seen Dayna as a true man._

 _And Soolin._

Madness - even more madness than he was accustomed to - beckoned that way, and he pushed the thought back. 

"And what _do_ you term the business of true men?" He asked, briefly wishing that Vila was there to ask the stupid questions. Refusing just to wish that Vila was there at all. 

"Fighting," Benstead grated. "Maiming, battling, killing." 

"Oh." Well, he had fought - and possibly killed - Blake, but stupidity didn't stretch telling Benstead, or Deva, that. 

"They be the business of true men." 

"And you know this because -" 

After all, it was one thing to have Hommiks - at least human, if poor specimens of men - lecture him on 'manliness' - and quite another to hear it from a nine-foot-tall, twelve-winged, four-footed, purple avian. 

Although as the avian could behead him with one snap of its massive beak, he would put up with it. 

For now. 

For the sake of survival. 

"We've studied, we have." Benstead was nodding again, the virulent feathery crest on its overlarge head bobbing wildly. "Studied ways of men, right and wrong ways, business of true men and true women." 

Avon looked back at Deva, who shrugged apologetically but kept quiet. Wisely, perhaps, he was even less of a 'true man' than Avon, and had been rubbing - or rather cleaning - a very grubby and simply furious computer for some time now. 

Deva seemed to like Orac, which was nearly as disturbing as Benstead and its 'true men' talk. 

Benstead's many-faceted eyes were fixed on him, its translucent membranes nictating busily. It was - disconcertingly hypnotic. 

"We've watched the viscasts. Terran viscasts." 

"Federation propaganda -" he mumbled before he could stop himself. Though surely, as allies, they'd heard this from Blake - 

"Many many viscasts. To tell us about true men, true women. And what means it being such." 

Benstead paused, and flicked a switch with one massive claw; above them, a screen flashed and sputtered into life. It showed the Gauda Prime forests, the clearing surrounding the base they had fled. There were tiny black figures scurrying around it like black ants. Black, human ants. 

_Federation stormtroopers,_ Avon thought, his lips thinning in an unthinking sneer. "The Federation's... true men," he said very softly, almost to himself. 

Deva winced, and said nothing, smoothing a hand across Orac's gleaming case. 

"Not like, no. Your business be naught like theirs," with a complicated wriggle that might have been a avian shrug, " but Blake has need of it. Federation's true men have other business. They fight, they battle, they kill..." 

The claw pressed clumsily into a button; on the screen overhead, there was a massive, white light explosion, soundless and terrifying, and the tiny black troopers were flung about like - like insects. 

"They die." Benstead rumbled. "That, we have learned, is most important business of an enemy's true men. It be dying." 

**\- the end -**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men." 
> 
> from Isaac Asimov's _Foundation's Edge_


	14. Avon Has a Habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet done for a challenge giving the words _words resistant_ (which I had to cheat on), habit, and flotilla... and yes, even though it's on the totlally cliched Floating "Pleshure Palace"!!! - it really is gen.

**Avon Gets A Habit**

****

It was unnerving... Avon being so silent for so long. Especially since he was silent from the sheer fury born of...

"It wasn't his fault," Vila said nervously, trying very hard not to stare, and failing totally. "I mean, how was Bl-uurk..." He swallowed the name at the twin fierce looks shooting at him. Even mentioning _that_ name was dangerous, stuck as they were on a luxury starship now travelling with the Federation's celebrated First Fleet. 

A luxury flying pleasure palace starship. 

Something "Bl-uurk's" contact hadn't mentioned when they'd asked for a secret meeting to hand over vital information collected from senior military figures by the rebellion's most valued infiltrators... and Vila's was having no trouble working out exactly how they'd gathered it. He'd seen the pillows where they'd probably talked... and the silk sheets and soft-as-cloud mattresses too. 

"After all, they hadn't met up with the Fleet when we got here..." Cally, disguised and underdressed as an Amagon dancing girl, whispered, "they didn't expect the manoeuvres to end so fast." 

"Well," Vila couldn't resist, "not _those_ manoeuvres, anyway." 

"Shut up, Vll...mm," she hissed. 

He didn't much care for his disguise either, as one of the palace servants - it was mostly feathers and tassels and much too much red fur - but at least he and Cally had masks and could blend in with the domestics that the officers quite pointedly didn't notice. Avon, on the other hand... there hadn't been a servant's garb quite his size, so the absolutely _lovely_ ladies (and they were, too) who'd been hiding them and were now trying to smuggle them off this ship and on a flitter to Space City, had had to improvise. 

Vila didn't want to think about who the costume they'd come up with had originally belonged to, or what the soldiers and Upholders of Empire who liked such large-sized fantasies were thinking, but there it was, and Avon had to be forced into it - a scarlet Lindorilobsta-skin Sister of Sin habit, high poked (transparent pink lace) wimple and more - and prettier - makeup than the Supreme Commander wore to Alpa MardiGros... 

Avon hadn't said a word since the _wonderfully_ lovely ladies (they were, they really really were) had descended on him, ignoring his appalled, ineffective resistance, had efficiently stripped off his own soaking wet, painfully tight leather and had bundled him into _this_. Neither he nor Cally was ever going to admit they'd been in the doorway watching the whole thing... 

"It's your own fault," Cally hissed. "Falling in the Xenosex jacuzzi and getting misted half to death like that...we were lucky someone didn't discover our hiding place." 

"Personally," Vila mumbled, "I wouldn't have minded hiding there a bit longer -" 

They both glared at him, and he shut up again. 

"And I'm aware," she turned the glare back on Avon, who glared back, "that your feet are killing you. Wearing your thigh boots on missions is stupid in the first place," blithely disregarding her own choice of five-inch heels, "but you can't wander round the ship in bare feet. If we get caught -" 

The glare from Avon turned livid. 

"If we get caught," Vila couldn't shut up for long, not with this golden nugget to beat him with, "we get caught with a _man_ wearing absolutely nothing but a lobstaskin habit and thigh boots." 

Something he didn't really want to think about, and was desperately trying not to snigger at. 

"And if we _don't_ , you get to explain it all to Blake. Such a sacrifice for the Rebellion..." 

The glare turned murderous. 

"And Jenna," Cally added in a surprisingly whisper, watching as the gorgeously lovely ladies came around the corner and headed towards them, all smiles and nods and glances at their disguised and disgusted third, "and Avalon." 

The glare turned... terrified, though whether of the immediate danger from the ladies - or from the ladies back on the Liberator - or of _Blake_ \- Vila wasn't sure. Maybe, he couldn't help thinking, Avon would be better off staying... 

**\- the end -**


	15. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Gauda Prime, and written for a 'bed time' challenge... rather dark and sad.

**Dreams**

****

There had never been rhyme or reason to his dreams, all his life, but after Gauda Prime there was even less. All Avon could say for certain was that dreaming were no worse than being awake...

They were always different: there was the old, childhood one about burning bookcases, no less senselessly terrifying for its familiarity; the one about the secret basement that somehow ended up Scorpio's ballast tanks; the one with a dozen Cally clones all buried in secret corridors under the gardens at Xenon. Once or twice he dreamed about Anna, in a detached, rather clinical way; once he spent the night hours searching an unknown planet for Vila's favourite lockpick; once he even met Gan in an over-decorated slave-pit on what clearly wasn't Ursa Major. Often, he saw Blake at a distance. 

All of the dreams were different, all disturbing in their own fashion, but they always ended the same way: whether by gunshot, with a knife, by fire or acid, or any of a hundred ways he forgot as soon as he woke, he always destroyed his right hand. The one that had killed... the only two people he had loved. 

And Avon would wake, alone in what was left of Xenon base, and stare down at his undamaged hand, knowing that it was a dream. 

And just for a moment, until his need to survive kicked back in, he wondered if it would be so bad if the dreams never ended... 

**\- the end -**


	16. Birthday Tradition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A birthday ficlet done for an LJ friend :)

**Birthday Tradition**

****

He ran delicate fingers over the ornate crystal bottle lovingly, and thought of the starwine. Lindorian Elite Starwine... the finest quality booze in the entire galaxy.

So nice of Avon to give it to him each birthday. So nice that he gave Avon the same on _his_ day. 

Such a personal touch that neither of them had paid for the wine in the first place, but had 'borrowed' it from a grateful Sarkoff all that time ago. 

Pity that it was just the one bottle, that they'd emptied it in three days. But Vila wasn't a snob, he happily filled it with whatever wine, good or ghastly, he'd 'acquired' at their latest stop and handed it over... and Avon smiled thinly, took it, and five months later gave it back filled with whatever he had come by. 

Just as long as it wasn't bought and paid for - that would have been an insult to all good thieves - they both rather enjoyed the game. 

It was the thought that counted, after all. 

So Vila just gazed at the bottle, and thought of starwine... 

**\- the end -**


	17. Travis and the Vegetoid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given the prompt words _Travis_ and _rotten vegetables_... it's not at all sensible. Post post-Star One, wat Travis found at the bottom of that well...

**Travis and the Vegetoid**

****

"This," he gritted through clenched teeth, trying with his real hand to hold shredding leather together and with the other lining up for a shot at the obsequiously smiling... well, something before him, "is not funny. Where is Blake?"

"Bfffuujnfis?" The thing mumbled, with a curious, squishy bobbing action that looked rather like the bowing and scraping that that he had seen all too much of in Servalan's 'court'. 

Travis hesitated. Given the incredibly long fall after that damned computer tech of Blake's had fired and knocked him into the... whatever - he should have been very very dead. Instead, he had landed - hard - on what had appeared to be a bed of stale vegetable matter, and was now confronted with what looked suspiciously like a skinny, very vaguely human-shaped fungoid with spikey carrot-like tendrils surrounding the face of a slightly decayed star-neep, with an irritatingly ingratiating smirk carved into the softened flesh. 

"Phhhfeemnimimoppppttt!!" It added in that creepy, vaguely greasy voice. 

He hated vegetables. 

His mother had firmly believed in the health-giving properties of processed tuber protein, and had happily paid extra for the 'authentic' muck moulded into 'natural' shapes... and then happily made him eat the filthy things. Many of which looked all to much like different limbs of this creature. 

Yes, he really hated vegetables... and vegetoids. But since he didn't know where he was, or how to get back to destroying the galaxy and Blake, shooting the neep might be a bad idea. 

But the hell with it. 

He fired up the lazeron and grimaced as, with a mushy squeal, it exploded bits of overripe matter all over him; wiping it away, he stared out at a soft and spongy landscape all in shades of old khabbij leaves, beneath a dim, brown-tinged and potato-shaped sun. 

It was going to be a long walk home... 

**\- the end -**


	18. Avon's Werewolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The challenge was "Kerr Avon and a romantic moonlit dinner with a werewolf..."

**Avon's Werewolf**

****

The three moons shone done softly on the scene, lending an almost romantic glow to the sylvan setting of forest, flowers, and balcony overlooking a lake. That it was all totally artificial, and archaic at that - a relic of pre-Federation terraforming gone mad - did not for one minute detract from the ambiance.

"The condemned," Avon said silkily, staring into the darkly glowing shadows of his wineglass, "ate a hearty meal." 

The lupine would have raised an eyebrow had it been in its human form; as it was, it simply huffed and laid a huge head on its paws. It was simply too sated to argue. 

"Which begs the question..." But Avon chose not to finish. He wasn't sure that speculating on which of them the condemned would be was a wise move, at least until he managed to reclaim his weapon, or any other for that matter. 

He picked up a small, heart-shaped vegetable between his fingers, dipping it in the creamy rose-red sauce Valentyne and taking one cautious bite. He'd learned early in his spacefaring career to be cautious of unknown foods, no matter how delicious looking, how delicately prepared and how delightfully served. And this was even more so when offered by aliens with... dubious tastes in cuisine. 

He restricted himself to the strange but less worrisome items on his plate, the ones that were clearly _not_ meat of any kind. 

The lupine, watching him nibble on the morsel, huffed again and laid one huge, affectionate paw on his foot. Avon smiled down, with all the charm and tender sincerity he was able to muster, and ran one gentle hand over its head. 

All the while, he kept wondering where the hell the Liberator had got to, when the hell they would come and collect him before hunger overrode his hirsute host's inexplicable but lucky affection... 

And what the hell he was going to do when it reverted to an equally affectionate... humanoid. 


	19. Aardvark Avon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the challenge 'Avon the Aardvark', with a bow and deepest apologies to "Toy Story..."

**Aardvark Avon**

****

"Damn you Blake!!" Avon growled huffily as he climbed, panting, up onto the safety of a ledge.

A rather grubby window ledge, actually. He tried to find a spot to sit that didn't have sticky little fingerprints, but gave up and flopped down, glowering with beady black eyes at his Fearless, Feathery Leader. 

His teammates followed, more or less gracefully. Cally's woodenness and thin limbs made it easier for her, but Gan - big and round and well-stuffed - had to scramble, and even then needed Blake and Vila to help, yelping when Vila's nails dug in. 

Jenna bobbed and weaved and nodded. She might have been agreeing with Avon, but then again she might have been just nodding. 

Blake stood up carefully, spreading large red and gold wings for balance. "Be reasonable, Avon," he said, disregarding the fact that the Aardvark hadn't been anything of the sort since the Christmas Day they met. "How was I supposed to know the chemistry set was loaded?" 

Vila nodded, his rather gruesomely fanged, plastic smile never faltering. "Could have happened to anyone," he said, cheerfully sepulchral. 

"Anyone??" Avon pulled himself to his full height of 20 inches (and width of... rather more), smoothed down the patches of singed leatherette on his hide, and glared at the strange wooden Callycat, the blue-eyed Jenna-in-the-box, Vila the plastic toy Vampire, the big, green Ganilla Gorilla, and finally, Blake the Big, Bouncy, Brilliantly Bright Bird of the Rebel Bedroom, who led them in their fight for freedom... 

"You _blew up the toybox_!" 

**\- the end -**


	20. Jenna Had Heard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny moment after Terminal...

**Jenna Had Heard**

****

She'd heard the rumour, faint and uncertain as it was, on the tattered edge of smuggler's gossip. She was surprised at how much it hurt. Now she sat in the barren flight deck of a small, battered flyer, and stared out at the darkness.

Gone... _all_ of them. Cally... Vila... yes, and even Avon... and the ship. _Her_ ship. Destroyed in some unknown disaster out near a minor sinkhole called Disentastra. Rumour had it the President - the _ex-_ President - had caught and killed them, but rumour also had the ex-President dead. Rumour was growing evil, mocking, maybe lying tendrils of death and destruction... 

But it was true - at least she thought it was true - that the ship and crew hadn't been seen anywhere, by anyone, for months. 

She sat and stared out into nothing. And she wished that she'd answered Avon's one, brief, duty-bound message, that she'd swallowed her pride and gone back. 

She wished she'd been there to save her ship, or at least to see _her_ Zen one last time before it died.... 

**\- the end -**


	21. Hiring Jarriere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written on the prompts _Jarriere, Avon, soap bubbles_ and _parrot_... two men meeting on the edge of the spiral rim. AU.

**Hiring Jarriere**

****

They didn't go to bars... so they met at a restaurant on the edge of the spiral rim.

Jarriere ordered broiled XXenggidor parakeet... with yams, jams, black-eyed susans and Kkhoka-col; his little pets, a new fancy he took everywhere with him, sat in a jelly-like cluster on the edge of the table and squabbled in tiny, bubbly voices over scraps. Avon closed his eyes, pretended he wasn't there, and had just a winesap chaser. 

The seven-foot-tall talking parrot that served them was careful not to look at his relative on the plate. It was, after all, an alien-eat-alien galaxy out there. 

"Well?" 

The question couldn't be avoided, and Avon did - admit it as he wouldn't - want to know. 

"Och, she's dead," Jarriere said happily through a mouthful of feathers. 

"I'm aware of that," Avon snapped... then lowered his voice as heads turned. "I doubt anyone in the ex-Federation is _not_ aware of it, the viscasts have been running without a break. Ex-Commissioner Sleer -" 

"Shhh!" Jarriere leant forward and pressed one finger, slightly smeared with sauce and mashed susans, to Avon's lips. "Dinna be sayin' her name, even now. Ye should know better than that, Mister Chevron." 

Silenced by deep outrage - and the need to withstand the impulse to lick his lips - Avon waited. 

"In any case, she'll no' be troubling you again. Or me." 

"The reports say a mysterious poison." Avon said carefully: not quite a statement, not quite a question. "But no one could find any trace..." 

Jarriere looked up with his wide-eyed, beamingly blank stare. One hand strayed to his little pets, and they curled trustingly over it, their translucent skin, as delicately rainbowed as soap bubbles, shimmered pinkly with joy. 

"Trade secret, Mister Chevron," he said finally, "and 'tis likely you don't want to know, but I'll give ye a hint... she couldna resist somethin' new, a possession, a diversion, an amusement others couldna have and she could. Even the most innocent of them... or..." he rubbed a fingertip over the glistening skin, watching the pink deepen to rose, "especially... the least." 

A faint, odd scent touched the air... sweet but stinging. 

Avon stared down at the jellyish creatures for a moment, and decided Jarriere was right - he didn't want to know. With a shrug, he passed across the agreed payment... and hooked a jam-coated susan from the plate as he did. It tasted surprisingly good. 

Jarriere beamed, dipped one of the pets in the sauce, and dropped it back into the cluster. there was a tiny, almost dainty squeal and the barely audibly slurp of sharp little mouthparts... "Always a pleasure doin' business with ye, sir." 

**\- the end -**


	22. Avon's Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt asked for Avon & Brian the spider with the keywords _boots, asparagus (or sparrow grass), clotted cream..._

**Avon's Pet**

****

It wasn't so bad... as hideouts went. Certainly no one would look for him here.

Avon carefully washed his hands clean of any Kairopan before entering the secret base... a century-old bunker safe from the local predators and the Federation sensors alike. He'd baulked at first when Orac - following the aborted Warlords conference - had suggested they come here while the little computer kept looking for his damned elusive, Fearless and Fickle Leader (the reported sighting, on a deadbeat world called Gauda Prime, now seemed yet _another_ dead end). 

The others had not only baulked, they'd downright refused. They hadn't realised that both computers belonged to the one who programmed them, and were even now probably finding a new and fulfilling life among the Hommicks and the ruins of Xenon base. Maybe he would go back for them later - and maybe he wouldn't. 

He didn't need anyone. Anyone besides Orac, of course. And Slave. And the robots he would buy from the profits of this new venture... and maybe Blake, just as a figurehead. 

And Brian... who now looked up with blatant, dog-like adoration in its big, bulging eyes as it settled again on its grassy bed in the huge cage. Brian made a wonderful watch-dog, and was now a fierce protector of its beloved human, even if at first it had been more inclined to make a meal of him. 

Avon had managed, by following Orac's bizarre instructions, to win the creature's five hearts for life. An obscure reference to the Kairopan natives' addiction to something called asparagus has seemed useless - the plant was extinct, for god's sake! - but between the man and the two computers, they'd come up with a facsimile of processed plankton and Lindorian sparrergros that had won Brian's heart, and might prove useful in capturing a heard of the beasts. 

He paused to stretch in and scratch Brian's eye-ridges, carefully - the spider still occasionally forgot that Eating Avon was Wrong - and not getting _too_ close. 

There was money in Kairos, good money. He could always use it while he looked for Blake; maybe he could also bring in some of the prisoners the Federation would dump here in a few weeks' time. After carefully vetting them, of course... 

Things were going - if not well - then slightly less horrendously _not_ well. 

Something squished against his boot; he looked down and swore, and Brian shuffled a little, apologetically. One problem with keeping alien stock that Alpha schools had never taught, was watching where you stepped. The boots would never be the same, the creamy, clotted... stuff... was ruinous. 

**\- the end -**


End file.
